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UP power stir could snowball across country

Sharat Pradhanin Lucknow

Until yesterday it seemed the six-day old strike by employees of the Uttar Pradesh State Electricity was ending. Now it appears it could spread to other parts of the country.

With the All-India Power Engineers federation warning of a nationwide token strike on January 24, an early resolution of the problem appears unlikely. The UPSEB employees began their agitation after the government took steps to reform the power sector.

Now employees of Northern Region Electricity Boards have threatened to proceed on a day's "pen-down" and "tool-down" strike with effect from Friday night. Protest rallies were planned today in the capitals of Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Rajasthan and Delhi.

Talks between the representatives of the 87,000 UPSEB employees and the government also ended without any decision being taken.

"Talks were to be resumed on Friday at 1 pm," spokesman of the UPSEB Employees Joint Action Committee Shailendra Dubey told rediff.com here on Friday morning.

He said that "expressing solidarity with our cause, the All-India Power Engineers Federation has served a formal notice for a nation-wide stir to Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and Union Energy Minister R Kumaramangalam."

Dubey warned that if the government refused to rescind the official notification restructuring the state electricity board, 83,000 power engineers across the country would observe a day's token strike from January 23 midnight.

Meanwhile, Chief Minister Ram Prakash Gupta has asked the striking workers "to give up the path of confrontation."

He also had withdrawn charges under the National Security Act imposed on some trade union leaders. In a statement, the chief minister said, "Since the employees have already started returning to work, the government has to adopt a conciliatory attitude."

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